"I'm very excited. These are people from our community that are volunteering and giving back to our community without compensation," Judd said. "It is important to us because while the demand for service in this economy has gone up, our ability to meet that demand by hiring more deputies has not gone up. These volunteers will help offset the demand."

The new VSSO program is an expansion of the Citizens' Assisted Patrol (CAP) program that uses volunteers to patrol neighborhoods and other areas of Polk County.

Currently, nearly 3,000 CAP volunteers operate in 54 communities and at two recreational trails in Polk.

In 2012, CAP volunteers conducted 33,099 patrols and donated 123,027 hours of their time, the Sheriff's Office said.

B.W. Crofton, 68, of Lakeland, was volunteering in the CAP program when he caught wind of the VSSO.

"Since I was a kid I've always wanted to be a cop and this is the closest I'll ever get to it," Crofton said.

While CAP volunteers are trained, the VSSO training regimen is much more thorough, involving 80 hours in the classroom and 80 hours in the field, and VSSO members are given more duties.

Those duties include house checks of people on vacation, checks of foreclosed and vacant properties, neighborhood patrols, school zone safety initiatives, animal control assistance, crime scene assistance, and documenting civil and criminal complaints.

"We're going to be assisting the deputies in routine matters as long as it doesn't involve a bad guy," said VSSO Dennis Lundstedt, 74, a retired firefighter. "We are not armed and we don't have power of arrest, but there are a lot of other things we can help out with."

Lundstedt said the class of 20 was made up mostly of retirees, but that some of the volunteers are in their 20s and 30s.

Judd said having retirees as volunteers is advantageous to the department.

"Most of the people that we are using today as volunteers are the wonderful people that ran this country before they retired. We are taking advantage not just of their formal education but of their decades of experience," he said.

Judd said that as of now, 64 percent of the Sheriff's Office force is made up on volunteers.

"It's exciting to me because while some governments have had downturns in the ability to provide services because of the economy, we've been able to maintain enough deputies, cobble together grants, and use volunteers to meet the need." Judd said. "The VSSO program is just another way for us to continue doing that."

[ Clifford Parody can be reached at clifford.parody@theledger.com or 863-802-7516. ]